


In the Wind

by Tammany



Series: Mr. Spence's Repose [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:37:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4020019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I am still here. Just busy. Still working at this.</p><p>It's more of Mr. Spence's Repose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Wind

Sherlock was hiding things.

Mycroft didn’t like it, but as was often the case where Sherlock was concerned, he didn’t know how to counter it—not without spiraling them all into some hellacious maelstrom of irrelevant angers and rese ntments, spats with roots sunk down in nearly forty years of relationship, all muddled with drugged fantasies and split loyalties and differing visions of what “good governance” meant and what it would look like when it was enacted. Mycroft couldn’t afford that. Not now. Not when he and Lestrade were facing a desperate question of what aspects of their current life could be saved—if anything.

Morgan Spence and Deek Lestrade: two aging men of muddled sexuality, rock-solid mutual affection, and ambiguous intentions. They’d been finding their own clumsy way well enough until Sherlock had come rocketing through insisting Mycroft’s cover was blown and his enemies on his trail. The past ten hours had changed that.

“Here—bacon sarnie,” Lestrade said quietly. He’d shifted into cook and provider mode, as Sherlock and Mycroft had battled for control of the laptops and phones, both brothers scrambling from research to hacked infiltration, to carefully guarded contact with allies. “Brought you a cider, too.”

“Can’t afford it,” Mycroft muttered back. He was frustrated verging on miserable. Sherlock had squalled like a midnight-cat on a fence rail at the thought of Big Brother sitting at his own desk, insisting that the position in the front window of the cottage turned Mycroft into a target.

Mycroft, too aware of the logistics of attack, had been forced to agree. But now he was sprawled on the floor of his bedroom, laptop in front of him, everything at a far from pleasing angle to work on…and what was the point? Anyone with infrared tracking or magnetic field imaging could still locate him. Indeed, he could come up with dozens of bits of technology that made a joke of any precautions he and Sherlock were imposing. Drones. Motion detectors. CO2 sensors. The list approached infinity.

Sherlock stuck his head into the bedroom, his mobile phone glued to his ear, his scowl permanently in place on his brow. “We have an idea,” he growled. “But it involves getting your old unit involved.”

“No,” Mycroft snapped. “Anthea’s taken over. She’s not going to be tricked by anything we do. I’ve never been sure she completely believed I was dead the first time.”

“I think I can arrange for MI5 to track you here, only to conclude it’s not you.”

“How? The last I knew your contacts in MI5 were not so fond of you as to perform that sort of favor.”

“Well, there is that. They’d have to believe it.”

“Hard to pull off, since I really am me.” Mycroft dropped his face into his hands. He felt so juvenile and out of character lying on a carpet on his stomach, pounding at his laptop. He’d spent hours of his boyhood and early adulthood in a careless sprawl as he worked….and worked…and worked. Always something to achieve, always some goal that overrode comfort and even dignity. Here he was again.

Mr. Spence had sat at his desk—an old Welsh pine kitchen table, polished up carefully and placed in front of the big front windows. He’d had an old oak office desk chair that was not elegant, but which he could sit in for hours at a stretch without aching. He’d had a blown glass paperweight—a delicate oceanic spiral of bubbles, so exact in graded size and placement the final image was like a glowing jelly fish patterned with a spin of gleaming dots. Mr. Spence would get up in the morning, and enjoy each stage of his life—using the loo, showering, brushing his teeth. Dressing in the modest, nerdish clothes he’d determined were Mr. Spence’s natural style. Taking Archie out for a walk. Cleaning out Dominic’s stall in the morning, putting out good hay and feed cubes and water. Going in for breakfast.

When Lestrade stayed over, the man would come padding down the narrow stairway, seeming larger than his true height and weight justified. Often he’d wear little in the morning but trousers and a soft, worn vest. He’d accept a mug from Mycroft with that alert, amiable grin that clung to boyishness long after Lestrade had left boyhood behind. After they’d eaten Mycroft would settle to the day’s work at the desk, while Lestrade would take the scooter back into town to check the hens and garden a bit—or rendezvous with old retired coppers and drink a pint or two and tell lies.

If they stayed at Lestrade’s the patterns reversed, changed around…but in the end it didn’t matter. Between them they had framed a vast, warm space to contain their time and their possibilities: a home made as much of habit and shared understanding of their potential, a place sheltered and safe in which they could quietly find their way to completion.

Now the secure walls of that life were caving in. Mr. Spence and all he had come to love were threatened by the pressure of the wind.

“Just see what you can work out, Sherlock,” Mycroft said, face still in his hands, trying to act annoyed and weary more than grief-stricken and helpless. “We’d like reliable confirmation that I’m not me.  I think Greg can get by securely so long as the Secret Services are all convinced I’m merely a look-alike of my former self. They’re not hunting him.”

“I’m calling John,” Sherlock said.

“You’re not. We do not want to draw their attention until we’ve prepared a plan of action. John may not be memorable in his own right, but he is considered a reliable indicator of your location and status.”

Sherlock pouted. “I’ll call him anyway, so he’s ready to come down.”

“No.” Mycroft raised his head and directed a cold ice stare at his brother, driving his will against Sherlock’s as he had for all the years of their lives. He had to win—again.

God, he was tired of having to fight Sherlock….

He would not say it—could not say it. Mr. Spence was peaceful at least in part because Mr. Spence held Sherlock at bay. Sherlock didn’t dare interfere too often, lest he put his brother’s secure identity at risk…

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, at he left with a huff.

Mycroft returned to his computer work.

He was good with computers. With a computer in his hands and a link to the net he could streak from site to site with speed, agility, precision—a trickster on a Cloud trapeze.

If he couldn’t convince the secret services he was not Mycroft Holmes, there was nothing for it but to run. If he ran—he could see no safe, sane way to keep any of Mr. Spence’s treasures.

He worked hours, sweating, growing stiff and achy on the thin oriental carpet. He was one of the few people who had a truly good idea of all the ways and places his ID information was encrypted. He was one of the few people who had any hope of replacing all the accurate information held on him with lies—wrong fingerprints, wrong blood types, wrong DNA markers, wrong dental records. He marshalled his tools, all the gambits that would let him pierce enemy files, all the virus programs that would exist passively, ever ready to infiltrate new file storage and replace old information with new illusions.

Anthea had betrayed him, at the end of his stay—though she had betrayed him gently. He still thought she’d intentionally slipped information of her planned coup to him, giving him just enough time to run before her people hit. He wasn’t sure…he’d never been sure. But he knew her skill level. She’d long been at a level that ensured they’d come in conflict—or find some way to divide and establish complementary fiefs running parallel to each other. He’d never been sure to the last if she’d turn on him—or merely peel away from him.

He still wasn’t sure.

Toward midnight he lay staring at the screen, trying to decide whether to attempt his own old secret system’s software—or wait till he’d had a chance to talk to Sherlock.

There was a tap at the door.

He looked up.

“Lestrade,” he said, in soft greeting.

“Mike?” Lestrade said, and tipped his head. “Mind if I come in?”

“Of course not.” Mycroft started to rise and play “good host.”

“Nah…stay there you silly berk. Head down where they can’t aim.” Lestrade lowered himself carefully, until he sat cross-legged on the floor with Mycroft. “Not stayin’ long anyway. Just thought…”

He fell silent.

Mycroft, unsettled, waited, but the other man remained unspeaking. At last, Mycroft asked, “Was there anything you needed to know?”

Lestrade propped elbows on knees, and kneaded his face wearily, as though forcing exhaustion from his eyes. “Eh. Yeah. I guess.” He stalled for a second, but then said, gruffly, “What are our odds, Mike? Of being able to stay here? Together?”

Mycroft thought about it, trying to express what an afternoon and night of work had suggested to him. After long moments, he said, hesitantly, “Not terribly good. Not if any of the people who actually knew me bother to check in person.” He pulled himself into cross-legged stature, too, like Lestrade, and looked his friend in the eye. “I think I’ve got a good chance of getting into the records and altering my vitals—corrupt their ‘memory’ of who I am. Make myself taller, shorter, change finger prints, change blood types. Fudge things so that I end up seeming like an unlucky doppelganger of myself. Anyone who didn’t know me might accept that I wasn’t the real Mycroft Holmes. Even if they had access to live footage of me—I’ve changed enough of my stance and body language, and I’ve aged enough, to pass, I think, even with underlying bone structure. But if anyone who’s worked with me checks…. I worked with Anthea for almost a decade. She will not be fooled.”

Lestrade nodded. “If she is fooled?”

“If she is fooled, I can think of no more compelling argument to the world that I am not Mycroft Holmes. If the records and those who knew me best all assert I am not who I am—it will be believed. Sherlock and John and you could even be useful at that, arguing in various ways for the oddness of the resemblance while insisting I am not Mycroft Holmes.” He considered, then added, “I do not, however, think that outcome likely.”

Lestrade nodded. “Got it. Then the next best bet is to run—and if we run, we’d do better to separate?”

“Separate, yes. You might be able to stay, though you’d be in some danger as a source of information. Otherwise, though, yes. Run. To new identities. Probably each of us alone.”

Lestrade stared, face worn and blank, eyes on the far wall of the room. “Yeah. Ok. Got it.”

Both were silent.

It was almost an hour later, that Mycroft forced himself to speak. “I would prefer otherwise. I do not want to be on the wind.”

Lestrade cleared his voice, throat full and hoarse and aching. “Yeah. Me, too.” He met Mycroft’s eyes. “C’mere.” He patted the floor beside himself, and gestured clumsily. “Just—c’mere, you great berk. While you still can.”

Mycroft leaned, crept, and tucked himself against his friend. They clung tight. After a time they lay together on the floor, loving without making love, and cherishing each moment of warmth against the coming wind.


End file.
